[Jill, Derick & the Kids: Moving On!!]

I think you're right Razzleberry Pie. Jill's reached the pinnacle of Gothard women's achievement. She found a man young, courted with out undermining her "purity" (UGH!!!), got married and proved her fertility on her honeymoon. She's come from obeying her father without questioning and taking care of far more children than one person could handle. In a few years she will be obeying her husband without questioning while caring for more children than one person can handle. I hope she and Derickdillard will make some different choices, but if not she might as well enjoy this "season" (double ugh). 

 

Sigh, so depressing. I think I need a stiff drink of... grape juice...

[Sarah's Sober Second Thought Series: The Old College Try]

I don't know, Buffy's freshmen angst was one of the things that I really identified with in season 4. My university was a six block walk from my old high school. I took the same bus as I did in high school and lived at home, but I remember feeling all at sea for the first couple weeks. Like Buffy, I felt like everyone seemed so much more confident and knowledgable and sophisticated than I did and it was hard to find where I fit. (Where was I on 9-11 aka my 3rd day of college? Hiding out on the top floor of the Biology building. I didn't even know anything was wrong until about 5 hours later). 

 

Really, I wish the show had kept the college focus going into the later seasons, or at least have more discussions over Buffy dropping out. 

[Sarah's Sober Second Thought Series: Candles And Pretense]

I think this is an unpopular opinion, but season 5 is my most intensely disliked season of Buffy. There are a lot of things that make me downright angry about season 6 (magicrack, Tarah being killed, Spuffy, Seeing Red and the over all feeling that things have to be depressing to be "real" ) but it does have the bright(er) spots of Tabula Rasa, OMWF and Normal Again, Also, it does have a lot of sources of debate and discussion because of the awfulness, and i get a weird enjoyment out of that.

 

But season 5.... wow... I remember Real Me and Buffy vs Dracula then nothing until The Body, then nothing until The Gift. Three, maybe four episodes out of an entire season. For the rest, all I remember is a general sense of dull, unnecessarily convoluted and moderately annoying. Even the Gift didn't really do it for me. I enjoyed Giles and Spike but the unbeatable hell god was beaten fairly easily only to have the apocalypse kicked off by a minor villain from half a season ago for no reason in particular? Yeah, I'll take the yellow crayon over that mess any day. 

[S04.E02: White Out]

Love, love, loved it! Daddy Charming, Captain Swan, Emma makes a new friend! I like that Elsa isn't a villain and Elizabeth Mitchell seems interesting and (fingers crossed) more subtle than recent Once villains. Also, although it was a comic B-plot, Snow hasn't been that kick-ass in a season and a half, so her outburst made me happy. My favourite little moment, which I don't think has been written about yet, was Charming and Emma's answer to Snow's "what do babies dream about?" question. The dead pan "Bull fighting" "laser tag" answers were so well matched. Great family moment. More please Once writers!

 

Also props to Josh for the drunken father monologue. Nicely done.

[The Duggars: In the Media and TLC]

They watched what!?! Honestly, I would be less surprised if they were watching Annabelle or Paranormal Activity or Magic Mike. Isn't the whole point of Footloose about using restrictive religious rules to cover up real issues around guilt and grief? About not getting overly legalistic in your biblical interpretation? About how the Bible generally endorses dancing? If they're not getting that great Ecclesiastes quote about a time to dance, what moral are they taking away from it? That we must beware the charismatic stranger who will corrupt our youth? Yikes!

[S07.E11: Teacher's Pets]

I may just have yelped at the tv when the safe crew was announced. If I had my way it would have been Drew, Cig and Dana top, Sacha, Rachel and George bottom with Stella safe (Stella's was well done, but too much of a mask for me). After I thought about it some more, I think I'm more okay with what happened. Sacha's work was technically good, even if it bore no resemblance to a cheerleader cyclops, while George and Rachel's was a mess. Plus, while I would have liked the judges to have a word with her about following the actual challenge, it does look kind of hypocritical for her to win one week for a doll with a clown face (which some argued didn't really fit the challenge) and get yelled at the next for doing largely the same thing. She does go her own way too much, which will be a problem because if a director asks for a teen cyclops he or she won't be too happy if they get a multi-eyed space alien, but i think a little bit of maturity will help her find the line between out of the box and not in the same zip code. 

 

Some other random thoughts...

 

George: yeah, that was bad, but I did like the mullet. We do call it hockey hair for a reason in Canada. Actually, I wonder if George shouldn't have gone with the Canadian version of the entitled jerk football jock aka the hockey player. It would have fit the models' physique a lot better and been the unique twist he seemed to be looking for. 

 

Dina: I loved her look so much in the make-up room, where I think she went wrong was the costuming. The big hat and drum (and possibly some of the last look painting) seemed to age the character. In the earlier shots it looked a lot more like a wide-eyes baby faced teen than the final product. 

 

Loved Cig and Drew. Drew's model's "don't touch me" made me fall off the couch laughing. 

[S04.E01: A Tale Of Two Sisters]

 

But I have had it up to here with Regina. She is so busy whining about HER happiness and HER love and HER life that she never stops to consider what it's like for Robin's kid to have his mother back or for Marian to have her freedom and her family back. No one should be allowed happiness if it interferes with Regina's!

I will give Regina a little tiny bit of latitude here, although her indignation at the thought that killing and torturing people might have consequences never ceases to annoy me. (Actually, no, I wouldn't mind her whining if the show's creators didn't seem to think we should sympathize with her.) Anyway, whatever else I blame her for, I can't blame her for not thinking about Robin and Roland first in this situation. I'm more of a Snow than an Evil Queen, but when I recently found out that an ex who became an ex because of massive commitment phobia is now in a long-term relationship... well, my first thoughts were not that I was pleased that he had found someone to help him over his issues. Not that I started gathering ingredients to go back in time and murder the new girlfriend, but... being angry or irritated that someone else got what you wanted in itself isn't a huge problem for me. Not getting over it, or attacking the people in question is.

[Crystal: Pretty Sailor Reboot]

 

I guess this incarnation won't be featuring plotlines like "let's hold a princess training seminar/ski competition/ice skating competition to try to find out who the Moon Princess is!"

I agree, and I'm half delighted and half really disappointed by that. Those episodes were such fantastic cheese.

[Rainbow Hearts and Unicorn Stickers: A Positivity Thread]

I tuned in because of the concept. I loved disney and fairy tales as a kid, so much so that I was horrified in university when I started reading about how detrimental the princess fantasy could be. I didn't want to believe it. My major life goal for at least a year (when I was 7) was to become a red-headed mermaid and I still turned into a sensible, independent, smart woman. Those authors had to be wrong... and then I started watching Say Yes to the Dress...

 

I watched the first episode and saw Josh Dallas fighting his way down the hall with baby Emma, swooned and got completely hooked. It wasn't only because that scene was very swoon-worthy, which it was, but also because it was a show saying that being a father, and men being there for their babies is important. Then I met Snow (who is 100x smarter than in her source story) and Emma, the reluctant princess, and Ruby and Granny and Rumple, all characters who, especially in their early days, felt like people, not a walking bundle of stereotypes with pretty hair. 

 

And I can't do hearts and unicorns without huge shout-outs to Josh, Collin and Jennifer (with honorable mentions to Robert C.) I am so impressed every week by their facial expressions and reaction shots. They've all managed to go so far beyond what the script has given them that I can get completely lost in the moment. I believe that Charming is the loving father of a daughter his own age and that Hook is a pirate who is completely in love with the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. I can see Emma struggle to figure out who she is between her lost girl childhood and extremely weird parentage and I love almost every minute of it. I've watched the end of 3A so many times and I get teary each and every time because Jennifer, Josh and Collin just kill that good-bye scene. Are there plot holes galore? Absolutely. Do I care when Charming gives Emma the forehead kiss and Emma is so close to losing it? Not a bit.

 

Bring on Season 4!

[Jill, Derick & the Kids: Moving On!!]

I'm really starting to feel that the tragedy for all of these Duggar, Keller etc couples is that they're in arranged marriages and don't even know it. Yes, arranged marriages can and do work quite well, but the participants have been raised with a concept of marriage that goes along with it. The Gothard girls (and guys too, to a slightly lesser extent), on the other hand, are raised to believe that God (aka Daddy) will send them their perfect soul mate prince charming who they will fall madly in love with instantly. They're encouraged to become infatuated and to approach, well, life, with the maturity of a seventh grader. Where does that leave these women when the infatuation goes away and reality hits?

[S02.E08: I Said Yes!]

As a Canadian French teacher I am so, so, soooooo embarrassed by Suki and Jinder. Why do they keep speaking Spanish and Italian in Paris. Whyyyyyyyyy? 

[S02.E02: There's a Fish in My Pants]

Shoot! Jen and Shawn were my hometown team. Oh well, at least there are a lot of other great teams to root for... just not Rex and Bob. The surfing I could see but the chair. Really? How do you expect to get anywhere in this competition if you can't (or won't) build a chair?

[Season 5: All Episodes Talk]

Although it would have been great to know more about why Kelsey Grammer's great-grandfather ran off, I also think that information probably is lost or never existed. My great-grandfather left his son and moved to the States from Canada around 1927, after his wife died and left my grand-father with his sister-in-law. Why? Well, if you asked my great-great-aunt, he was a worthless drunk who ended up on the streets of New York and Boston. The other version of the story is that he was blacklisted in his home town for his union involvement and had to leave. He wrote to his sister-in-law several times asking her to come to the States so he could be reunited with his son, but she always refused. Should I be like the annoying WDYTYA celebrity who brags about how he was a rebel with a cause - just like me! Or should I shake my head in shame and look for more inspiring ancestors? I'll probably never know. It's what drives me crazy every time I try to see what shakes out of the family tree.

[Climbing Trees: Best Episodes]

I just found the Brian Blessed episode and wanted to mention it among my favourites too. I loved his enthusiasm, his random singing and poetry quoting and the way he dealt with everyone he met on his "quest" (loved that he kept calling it a quest too!). Jabez's triumph over adversity and finding his brother was really touching, although I wondered a few things, like how the family became paupers in Portsmouth and whether Martha was really an "idiot" or whether she was just so sick from whatever was killing her (and probably killed her father and sister) that she came across as disabled. I guess that's the kind of thing it really isn't possible to find out. While my absolute UK favs are Patrick Stewart and Jerry Springer, it was a lot of fun (I enjoyed Alex Kingston's WDYTYA for similar reasons).